Great Doug! It put the (my) misty/undefined 2D feeling into the right place about the location - even made me feel a little queasy.

;-) Where's the heat shield?

Updated - more of a dolly-in-THEN-zoom-out - still at http://www.dougellison.com/?p=19 If we had an unquestionable heatshield location, I'd put it in. Someone was asking about shadow. The shadow would be way way off the bottom of this image, and way to the right as well.

Doug

<Keanu Reeves voice> Whoa. </Keanu Reeves voice>

excellent doug.

how about overlaying in the colour image of the lander on the surface and then zooming down to show it.

Yes, I prefer the second version - very nice! Wait, I think I just saw some things that looked just like letters on the ground below the lander - nah, they are probably just rocks!

Doug, you've nailed it with this second version!

Awesome animation !! !!

Nico

Fine animations, for sure, great work!

Beautiful! Thanks for sharing! Great software being run by a real artist!

Superb animation doug, It tells a story!

Awesome, Doug. Just to be sure: all of the motion in the animation is just because of the motion of the camera; Phoenix is standing still in space. Is that correct?

--Emily

Neat!--where does the topo map come from?

Oh Yea!.
Oh: Yea Yea Yea.

Jack

Beautiful animation.

I assume that the crater in the upper right hand corner of the animation's last frame is Heimdall Crater. I have no sense of scale. How far is Phoenix's landing point to the edge of Heimdall Crater? Maybe a scale indicating one kilometer might be a good idea for the last frame?

Everything is totally static - I thought about emulating the rest of the landing, but until we see the PHX team releasing an EDL reconstruction, it would be fairly pointless. The elevation is fictional - I made it up - I gave the crater a bit of a rim, some of the hills a bit of elevation - just enough to hint at something. The final frame shows Heimdall.

Blapp! Framm! Flurg! (words fail me!)

I am jealous of your mad skills. Thanks for enthusing this enthusiast!

Simply superb Doug!

Puts it all in perspective.

Just like I imagined it....

Thanks for sharing!


-Dave

Doug,

Beautiful work
I am truly humbled by your skills
wow!

I'd like to have a go at the original image, do some Photoshop framing, etc. Which is the best version out by now? And where do I find it?

Go to the HiRISE page for the latest versions. No full res yet but some pretty big .tif images are there, with and without the insert.

Thank you James. I'll work with that one, can't wait for the full-res though!

Stunning animation Doug!

Really shows just where Phoenix is in relation to Heimdall and the surface.

Here's my version of the image, what do you think?



Poster-size version here

I think I can quote this PM, which I appreciate a lot, from MarsEngineer:

---

"Very nice Soeren!

I like the way that the inset was moved off of the crater. It makes the scene of a lonely lander on the parachute seem all that much smaller and the surface of Mars all that much more vast.

Thank you!!!!"

---

- I wonder if it is not really clear to people what the white bars represent. Well, they line up with Phoenix in the main image, and are more or less of the height and width of the box insert. Maybe it should be done otherwise, if it doesn't spring immediately to the eye of unsuspecting onlookers...

Anyway, I had fun doing the poster (a big 4380x2693 pixels, linked above), and think I'll print it out and put it on my wall someday soon!

Actually, I think the box marking the inset in the zoomed out view is larger than the actual inset in the HiRISE release.

EDIT: Ahh, yours looks just about right, sorry about that. Great concept, btw!

Great stuff Mr Oersted

I would suggest putting the enlargement of Phoenix picture box next to the word "Phoenix" rather than "over" to increase the association of image with name.,...

then make the white lines thinner and put a small arrow head where they meet the picture edge... and lose the one on the far right -- not necessary and a distraction away from where the main action.

Just some ideas, good work!

Oersted, very professional looking.

Thx for your comments guys!

Kenny, those are very good suggestions, and would probably improve the poster. I'll leave it as it is, though, since it was just a little project for an evening. I hope others will take up some of those ideas of yours. The arrows would be very good: Not so aesthetic-looking, but people would probably "get it" much more easily.

glennwsmith, professional is the last thing it is, but thanks! - I'm a total photoshop amateur, and most measurements in the poster are a bit off because they were merely made with the good old Mark 1 eyeball There isn't any fancy stuff in the framing simply because I wouldn't know how to do it! - Sometimes less is more though, and keeping it simple is probably not that bad.

Here's a very tiny version of a movie that I'm working on at the moment.
In the larger version, you can see Phoenix crossing the crater scene.
Not for scientific accuracy remember, just to be pleasing to watch.
Uses animation previously produced for Phoenix and combined with new shots/editing/music etc.
Click to view attachment
Enjoy
Astro0

Marvelous Astro0!

Just an idea, and since I dont know how to make such movies, I have no idea if it works out anyway: maybe at the end you could zoom out and keep zooming out until MRO comes into the picture, camera facing Heimdall ... 'click' ...

Very nice! Like the sequence where the crater appears. Afterwards Doug's animation would be cool

>Phoenix over Heimdal

One small but major comment-- Phoenix is not over the crater. The gives the absolute wrong interpetation of what was happening since the lander has passing several tens of miles in front of the background crater. Good press, poor science.

My 2c.

--Bill

Do not forget inspirational.
AWS&T, june 2 issue, Craig Covault : "About 20 sec. after parachute opened, MRO took one of the most remarkable image in space program history".
When I see the image, when any people see the image, if the thought is : "it worth it" or "whoua", who would care about science? We'll never get science if people do not back Space Exploration. Rob's words are very powerful in this sense when one realise that even MarsEngineer(s) feel their hard work has paid off for themselves. I think there's time for science, there's time for wonders.
I understand what you mean though and lack of precision drive me mad sometimes... But I don't even care when the topic is out of my interests or when I don't know what it has been talked about.
And if I refer to The Other Doug saying that an event do not happen before an observer can see it, Phoenix is definately OVER Heimdall Crater

I thought about that of course, Bill, and I think it is valid to say "over Heimdall", because it can just as well be interpreted as "overlaid" or "seen over the background of". And for presentational purposes "Phoenix over Heimdall Crater" is a heck of a lot better than "Phoenix ten kilometers in front of...". Planes are also said to fly "over the North Pole", even though they probably weren't even within 10 km's of the place.

My interpretation: "Over" is definitely sufficiently vague to encompass the actual geometry.

A time-honored interpretation.

"Image of the Earth rising over the Moon from Apollo 8"
Click to view attachment

"The cow jumped over the moon."
Click to view attachment

Holy cow !!

Looking very much forward to the end-product Astro0! - I hope it will show just how far in front of Heimdall Phoenix is.

I must apologise for having been too critical of one of your compositions earlier in the thread but I really love the emotion of the Heimdall shot and wanted to see it presented in the best possible way (for me obviously, which is quite subjective I admit). Anyway, while my preference was for a still image like the one Oersted produced (which I think is excellent), your video really does bring it all together extremely well. When can we get the high res video? This one's a keeper, and just as excellent as Oersted's still presentation IMO.

Thanks Helvick. I didn't take it to heart. Art and science don't always mix.
The movie is still the weekend away from being closer to what I want. Keep an eye on this thread.
In the meantime, here's another version of the Heimdall image.
Yes, I know, it's colourised (I'm such a heathen), but I've kept the colours subtle to not overwhelm the significance of the image.
Also, taking a cue from Oersted, and a few other comments, I've included some inset shots and a description.

I'm sure that the teams over at Phoenix and MRO are really happy with all the interest (and fuss) that this image has produced.

Click to view attachment
Enjoy
Astro0

Doug: great idea with model of the lander, it looks very nice.
Astro 0, all your work is great. I can't imagine what we will see on larger resolution video or images from you. Thank you!

I'm only a member of this forums since MER's (my bookmark still "Mars Exploration Rover Forum" is), but I'm proud of be here with you.

Here's my movie version of the Phoenix/Heimdall descent image.
I've uploaded a 9mb version to Speedy Share which you can download here.
BTW - remember that this is for educational/entertainment purposes only.

I do have higher res versions but given I'm still in the dark ages at home with dial-up, this is the best I can do for now.
An acknowledgement to the Phoenix and MRO teams for all their work and the graphics team at DIAL for their wonderful EDL animation that forms the basis of this version. Please, can I say again what a fantastic tool your animations have been in my outreach work. Many thanks.

Enjoy
Astro0

PS: Can I note that with Doug's excellent animation, if you play it backwards, I think that it gives a better idea of the location of the parachute in relation to the crater. Try it, you can easily run Quicktime files in reverse.

Let me be the first to congratulate you sir. Dramatic and compelling with a fantastic soundtrack !! Hope you can get broadband sometime soon so we can see the higher res version

Then I'll second that. A masterpiece! Phoenix...risen from the ashes to appear soon...in a cinema near you....

Too modest, Mate! It's also for exhilaration and enchantment.
You should do the whole mission. We'll wait.

From Jim Bell's Planetary Society Blog update:

I don't remember seeing any figure for just how far away MRO was when the image was taken? Anybody knows?

http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/phoenix-descent.php

Only saw this version now Astro0: excellent!

My belated congrats, Glen; stunning, absolutely marvelous. I presume you'll share this with your TV audience?